Author | Mary Griffith |
---|---|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Genre | Utopian Science fiction novel |
Publisher | Prime Press |
Publication date | 1836 |
Media type | Print (Hardback) |
Pages | 131 |
ISBN | 978-1514738016 |
OCLC | 3253783 |
Text | Three Hundred Years Hence at Wikisource |
Three Hundred Years Hence is a utopian science fiction novel by author Mary Griffith, published in 1836. It is the first known utopian novel written by an American woman. [1] The novel was originally published in 1836 as part of Griffith's collection, Camperdown, or News from Our Neighborhood, and later published by Prime Press in 1950 in an edition of 300 copies.
The novel concerns a hero who falls into a deep sleep and awakens in the Utopian states of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Writers of utopian fiction generally need to set their imagined societies either in a remote place (as in Sir Thomas More's original Utopia and many imitators), or in a different time. Griffith's story was likely inspired by Memoirs of the Year 2500 by French writer Louis-Sébastien Mercier. [2] Griffith was however the earliest American writer to project her protagonist into the future to encounter a vastly improved social order. Many successors would follow her example; most famously, Edward Bellamy used the same trick in his Looking Backward (1888), as did many of the writers who produced sequels and responses to his work. The same tactic is exploited in John Macnie's The Diothas (1883), W. H. Hudson's A Crystal Age (1887), Elizabeth Corbett's New Amazonia (1889), Bradford Peck's The World a Department Store (1900), Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Moving the Mountain (1911), and other works.
Another, later book, published in 1881 by William Delisle Hay, was given the same title (Three Hundred Years Hence or A Voice From Posterity), probably in ignorance of Griffith's earlier but then-obscure work.
Reviewing the 1950 edition, Boucher and McComas characterized the novel as "an odd and delightful item of 1836 dealing with a strongly feminist future.". [3]
Feminist science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction focused on such feminist themes as: gender inequality, sexuality, race, economics, reproduction, and environment. Feminist SF is political because of its tendency to critique the dominant culture. Some of the most notable feminist science fiction works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.
Science fiction and fantasy serve as important vehicles for feminist thought, particularly as bridges between theory and practice. No other genres so actively invite representations of the ultimate goals of feminism: worlds free of sexism, worlds in which women's contributions are recognized and valued, worlds that explore the diversity of women's desire and sexuality, and worlds that move beyond gender.
Utopian and dystopian fiction are subgenres of science fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to readers. Dystopian fiction offers the opposite: the portrayal of a setting that completely disagrees with the author's ethos. Some novels combine both genres, often as a metaphor for the different directions humanity can take depending on its choices, ending up with one of two possible futures. Both utopias and dystopias are commonly found in science fiction and other types of speculative fiction.
Kelley Eskridge is an American writer of fiction, non-fiction and screenplays. Her work is generally regarded as speculative fiction and is associated with the more literary edge of the category, as well as with the category of slipstream fiction.
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Prime Press, Inc. was a science fiction and fantasy small press specialty publishing house founded in 1947. It published a number of interesting science fiction books in its brief four-year lifespan.
Equality; or, A History of Lithconia is a utopian fantasy novel. It is the first American utopian novel. The author is unknown, though Donald H. Tuck speculates that it could be Dr. James Reynolds, a zealous liberal crusader. The novel was originally serialized in 8 parts in the weekly newspaper, The Temple of Reason, beginning in 1802. It was first published in book form by the Liberal Union in 1837.
Mary Griffith (1772–1846) was an American writer, horticulturist and scientist. She published the results of her research in scientific and literary journals, as well as newspapers. She also published several novels and stories, including Camperdown, or News from Our Neighborhood (1836), as well as Three Hundred Years Hence, the first known utopian novel by an American woman.
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"...and some were human." is the first story collection by science fiction writer Lester del Rey, originally published in hardcover by Prime Press in 1948 in an edition of 3,050 copies if which 50 were specially bound, slipcased and signed by the author. The stories first appeared in Astounding and Unknown. An abridged paperback edition, including only eight of the twelve stories, was issued by Ballantine Books in 1961. A Spanish translation, reportedly dropping only one story, appeared in 1957.
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